Come Before Winter – Chapter Six – Mercy Me!
December 6th, 2021
2 Timothy 4:21, “Do your utmost to come before winter.”
CHAPTER SIX – MERCY ME
Startled, Mercy sat up on her bed abruptly, and then just as quickly, laid immediately back down, closed her eyes, and willed herself back to sleep. She had to see what happened! She lay there for long moments, her eyes squooze shut, slowing her breathing, she pretended to herself she was still sleeping. ‘Com’on! Cooperate!’ she commanded, but still her eyes moved restlessly across her eyelids as if waiting for a movie to begin. Eventually she sat up, rubbed away what little sleep remained in the corner of her eyes, and sighed. She feared she already knew how the dream was going to go had she not awakened, and briefly, wondered where her other self was. Was she still sitting there looking over the shoulder of the gentle man, perusing the pages for her name? Could this be a sign? and the enormity of that taunted her like a bully.
Mercy had had the words on the tip of her tongue so frequently she could almost read them; so emblazoned there, they were. For several years she had imagined that she would ask Patsy to help her know their friend Jesus. She didn’t know if that required a visit to a church or a call to a pastor or perhaps a course in Christianity? Mercy hadn’t really been exposed to this Jesus before, only the other one everyone always cursed and blamed. Some previous foster families attended church from time to time, requiring her to attendance also. You know, Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday and other erratic occasions that ‘looked good’, like Family Day and random church dinners. Mercy had watched the inconsistencies of the foster parents and church goers and had never wanted that conflicting behavior for herself; she saw right through their shine-on actions and lack of integrity. The Bible stories floated in one ear and emptied out the other as she identified with the stern judge sitting on a throne, pounding his gavel on a nearby podium while he threw lightening bolts and cast people into a fiery lake. ‘No thank you!’ Mercy had always said under her breath, ‘Get me out of here! Let me fly under the radar so I never get seen by an angry god.’
But then the Masons introduced her to a far different God, a gentle, grace-filled and loving God, named Jesus, and she had begun listening and asking questions, and had wanted to perhaps know Him too. Until, that is, she’d been displaced, and although their friendship maintained its closeness, the conversation felt awkward over coffee or at a movie. The questions deserved more depth and time spent, and Mercy recognized the seriousness of the decision she might make, and because she knew she didn’t take relationships with anyone lightly, and there weren’t too many to whom she entrusted herself, she had put this Jesus and a pending friendship with Him away on a shelf for some other day.
This was too much though. She didn’t know a lot, but she was bright enough to know her name, Mercy Day, wasn’t likely going to be found by that sweet old man in the leatherbound book called BOOK OF LIFE. She closed her eyes and attempted to envision him again, tried to reinvent pictures of the mansion she had found herself wandering in, and while there were images in the far reaches of her imagination, everything was ambiguous and hazy and blurred as if she had…dreamed it. Was that God?! she asked herself, and suddenly, Mercy had this funny feeling way down deep inside. She felt a tugging, a nudging, and she knew at once, it actually had been a holy moment; that was God! she had been with, and He resembled nothing like what she’d expected, no one like pictures she had seen of this Jesus, but somehow He had appeared to her…and she believed He came to give her a warning.
First a human father and now a godly Father…and all this time she had been perfectly, imperfectly fatherless, and now suddenly, mercy me! she didn’t know what to think. At once, she had two more fathers than she’d ever had, and they both were trying to tell her something, but she didn’t know what any of it meant.
With a trembling hand, she picked up her phone, scrolled through her contacts, and pressed ‘Send’ The ring sounded obnoxious in her cloudy head—one, two, and on the third ring, there was a pause, and she heard, ‘Mercy, sweetheart, is that you? Are you okay?’
A cry escaped her lips, and she heard herself reply, ‘Patsy…’ in a pitiful wail.
‘I’ll be right there,’ was what she heard, and the line went dead.
Psalm 68:5-6a, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, He leads out the prisoner with singing.”
To Be Continued…
